ust, and announced themselves as hungry
enough to eat their horses.

Out came pans and supplies, and the snapping of bacon fat and smell of
coffee rose pungent. Though, by their own account, they had ridden
hard and far, there was a feverish energy of life in each of them that
roused the drooping spirits of the others like an electrifying current.
They ate ravenously, pausing between mouthfuls to put quick questions
on the condition of the eastward trail, its grazing grounds, what
supplies could be had at the Forts. It was evident they were new to
journeying on the great bare highways of the wilderness, but that fact
seemed to have no blighting effect on their zeal. What and who they
were came out in the talk that gushed in the intervals of feeding. The
fair-haired man was a sailor, shipped from Boston round the Horn for
California eight months before. The fact that he was a deserter
dropped out with others. He was safe here--with a side-long laugh at
Susan--no more of the sea for him.

He was going back for money, money and men. It was too late to get
through to the States now? Well he'd wait and winter at Fort Laramie
if he had to, but he guessed he'd make a pretty vigorous effort to get
to St. Louis. His companion was from Philadelphia, and was going back
for his wife and children, also money. He'd bring them out next
spring, collect a big train, stock it well, and carry them across with
him.

"And start early, not waste any time dawdling round and talking. Start
with the first of 'em and get to California before the rush begins."

"Rush?" said Courant. "Are you looking for a rush next year?"

The man leaned forward with upraised, arresting hand, "The biggest rush
in the history of this country. Friends, there's gold in California."

Gold! The word came in different keys, their flaccid bodies stiffened
into upright eagerness-- Gold in the Promised Land!

Then came the great story, the discovery of California's treasure told
by wanderers to wanderers under the desert stars. Six months before
gold had been found in the race of Sutter's mill in the foothills. The
streams that sucked their life from the snow crests of the Sierras were
yellow with it. It lay, a dusty sediment, in the prospector's pan. It
spread through the rock cracks in sparkling seams.

The strangers capped story with story, chanted the tales of fantastic
exaggeration that had already gone forth, and up and down California
we